Key articles

Crime

Three Gardai have been convicted in Waterford in the case of a man set upon and assaulted in the city centre. Anthony Holness was taking a piss in New street when he was set upon by the Gardai who beat him and arrested him. Garda Daniel Hickey and Sgt Martha McEnery were both convicted of assault whilst Garda John Burke was convicted of intending to pervert the course of justice, in his case by moving away the cctv cameras from recording the scene.

David Ford, Minister of Department for Injustice has once again refused to release long suffering prisoner Brendan Lillis on compassionate grounds to receive proper medical attention. Roisin Lynch, partner of Brendan, and representatives from Sinn Fein and SDLP met with the minister today to lobby for his release but have been rejected once again, despite a ground swell of popular support, protests and rallies.

A 19 year old who died by suicide at Hydebank Wood young offenders centre in south Belfast last year had been locked in his cell for around 22 hours a day because of short-staffing. Allyn Baxter took his own life after disgracefully spending three days on remand for not paying his TV license.

Overcrowding, slopping out, TB infection, pathetic education facilities, Irish prisons are in deep crisis. Judge "Padlock" Patwell recently retired after 52 years on the bench. He was notorious for his hardline attitude and sent many a man and woman to jail. It was on the subject of Cork prison that he remarked whilst being interviewed on radio the other day, he was bemaoning the temporary release system, but refered to the 40 prisoners currently sleeping on matresses on the floors of the recreation room.

Gardai have made 177 arrests in a crackdown on "aggressive" or "inappropriate begging" in Dublin city in the past 2 months. The Dublin Chamber of Commerce are jubliant, boasting that begging has dropped tenfold as a result of the crackdown, meanwhile no charges have been brought nor even any serious garda investigation concluded into the corrupt awarding of a mobile phone licence to Denis O'Brien by Michael Lowry.

Crime has always been a prevalent factor across societies for millenia; today it helps to sell newspapers and get politicians elected, and wars against it consume vast amounts of public resources. Some believe that crime will never be eradicated from our social fabric, whilst others believe our social fabric to be the main propagator of crime. In the 6th Rethinking Revolution talk, Julian Brophy will be looking at different perspectives on crime, assessing the power relations that exist within modern criminal justice systems, and addressing questions like: Would a society without crime be possible?

During the 1907 Dock strike in Belfast there was a police mutiny involving 70% of the Belfast police. In this article John Gray argues that "When we look at the 1907 Dock Strike in Belfast and the police mutiny of the same year simple myths begin to evaporate. We find unskilled workers, mainly Protestant, fighting the employers, many their future leaders in the UVF, we find policemen, many Protestant, mutinying, we find the Independent Orangemen mustering hundreds of Protestant workers under a platform asking Protestants as Irishmen to play their part in the development of Ireland as a nation." The article is from Anarchy No 6, published in London in 1970

At 9:30 this morning, people gathered on O'Connell Street In Dublin to protest against the presence of war criminal and ex British prime-minister Tony Blair. Blair arrived at Easons at around 10am for the book-signing of his recent autobiography, escorted and protected by a sizable gardai presence. Despite the heavy rain, hundreds of protestors took part. At least one protester managed to get past the heavy security to try to make a citizens arrest of Blair for his war crimes.

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